03 First Year Monash

In 2006, after completing my VCE at MHS I enrolled in a Bachelor of Commerce and Aerospace Engineering at Monash University. In my first year I decided to stick to the course outline and take 6 Engineering subjects. Having done Physics, Methods and Specialist Maths in VCE, the subject material that was covered in first year wasn’t absorbed with too much difficulty. Whilst I performed the best in ENG1030 Electrical Systems, it was perhaps ENG1020 Engineering Structures that I most enjoyed. This was because of a girl named Kim that I befriended in my tutorial group. Kim had a boyfriend, and at no point did I intend to contest this, but it was just nice; although perhaps a little sad; to just have an opportunity to interact with a girl after four years at MHS. I did find her pretty, but I felt part of this derived from her natural intelligence. And she was genuine and honest, which I found very much alluring [00] . After four weeks through a group project for ENG1030 another student, who was proving to be utterly lazy and useless, forget Kim’s name, and seeing her seething reaction, and the feisty way in which she immediately put him back in his place before abruptly walking out; in contrast to her usual divinity; was perhaps the most entertaining but inspiring thing that I experienced that year [01]. In MAE1041 Aerospace Engineering I met another girl named Hannah. Hannah was also in my MGC1010 Management tutorial group, and I used the pretext of having acquired an early copy of a textbook to strike a conversation with her. Hannah was to be my first attempt of asking a girl out at university. My aspirations to secure in her a girlfriend never got off the ground because it was quite obvious she was much more interested in this other recusant guy, who was also studying Aerospace Engineering, and who rode a motorbike to campus and always wore a Honda jacket; and I couldn’t really compete with this, not with my overly balmy disposition and wardrobe of polo-shirts. Two other people that I befriended was Ivy, a very bright but affable Chinese girl doing Engineering who treated me like a close brother, and Jolin, an exceptionally charming young lady from Brunei who became a dear study-buddy. In each of these girls I saw all the fragments of beauty that I came to appreciate later in my friend Juno. I’ll talk about her later. Dating distractions aside, I hit the books pretty hard and loaded myself up with a flush of HDs that year. The Engineering department invited me to take part in a Research Program in my 2nd year, and I was also able to join the Monash chapter of the Golden Key International Honor Society. But how quickly things spiraled out of control. You’ve probably heard of the story of Icarus, and his fate when he flew too high up to the Sun.